In short, it >is
the atlas as a whole rather than the individual maps contained therein that
motivates this digital publication of the Ameri[c]an Atlas. To explain
why this artifact is interesting as an atlas requires some further historical
explanation. Atlases have been around for centuries. The term "atlas"was
first used by Gerardus Mercator in 1595 in his Atlas sive Cosmographicae Meditationes
de Fabrica Mundi et Fabricati Figura.[2][Mary Pedley, ed., The Map Trade in the Late Eighteenth Century: Letters to
the London Map Sellers Jefferys and Faden (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation,
2000), 10.]
Most cartographic historians date the first atlas to 1570 when Abraham
Ortelius put together a "published set of maps with a title page and table of
contents indicating a standard package;"[3][David Woodward, "The Techniques of Atlas Making,"The Map Collector 18
(1982): 2.] if Ortelius didn't use the name "atlas,"he produced the object that we now
call an atlas. Yet, a fuller history of the atlas shows that the object
predates 1570. Before the Dutch cartographic innovators like Ortelius and
Mercator, Antonio Lafreri in the late sixteenth century had compiled an atlas
factice, which is a collection, either loose-leaf or bound, of previously
issued maps that that were printed and sold individually. Lafreri gathered
together extant printed maps for his Italian patrons. The gathering together of
cartographic information into a volume – what we call an atlas – can be traced
back to the atlas factice. The atlas factice as precursor to the
atlas we know today, however, has become an afterthought in cartographic
studies. Cartographic scholarship tends to focus on atlases proper, especially
those by famous geographers, and has little to say about the atlas factice as
a unique set of maps compiled at the request of the user, or perhaps chosen by
the bookseller or printer, and bound together. Certainly scholars have studied
some of the more famous atlases factices in great detail (such Jeanette Black's
study of the Blathwayt Atlas, a collection of maps from the late seventeenth
century bound together for William Blathwayt, then secretary to the Lords of
Trades and Plantations and as such integral to the formation of the British
Empire).[4][Woodward, "The Techniques of Atlas Making,"4. See also James R. Akerman,
"From Books with Maps to Books as Maps: The Editor in the Creation of the Atlas
Idea,"in Editing Early and Historical Atlases, ed. Joan Winearls
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995), 7.] For the most part, though, the atlasfactice has failed to
interest scholars who have tended to focus on extraordinary works made by and
for major figures – not ordinary works owned by anonymous users.

That the atlas
factice consists of maps, each of which is seen as an individual item, is
perhaps one reason why the atlas factice has been studied so little, as
cartographic scholars have worked hard to elucidate the significance of
individual and especially exemplary maps. Studying a set of maps put together
after their publication by an unknown person seems to pale in significance
compared to studying a history of great cartographic firsts. What does it
matter that someone, somewhere, decided to bind this particular collection of
maps together in a group, if we already know about the individual maps and
their maker(s)? Yet we might learn something from considering the compilation
of the atlas factice. One thing the atlas factice helps us study
is the status of the original. Peter van der Krogt writes that "an ideal copy
of an edition [of early atlases] does not exist, because such a concept implies
that all copies of all the same edition will include exactly the same maps."[5][Jeanette Black, The Blathwayt Atlas, 2 Vols. (Providence, RI: Brown
University Press, 1970-1975).] He
maintains that the inevitable variation in copies of early atlases –
especially due to early methods of printing and binding – makes it impossible
to identify any one as the ideal copy against which all others will be
compared. Thus, pushed to its logical extreme, there are only variants even in
the case of a proper atlas. In short, Krogt allows us to think of all atlases
as a kind of atlas factice. For the atlas factice, this
variation is foundational: not only does the selection of maps usually differ,
but variation is virtually guaranteed because even two atlases factices
with the same selection of maps might have different bindings, a different
handwritten table of contents, or other differences in their accompanying
materials. This variety impedes the empirical eye of most historic
cartographic studies, especially as so many of these atlases factice
have been disassembled (to maximize profit by selling the individual maps) or
have disappeared into private collections and library special collections. No
wonder, then, that this cartographic phenomenon has eluded extended scrutiny.
Publishing the Ameri[c]an Atlas provides the opportunity to study the
phenomenon of atlas factice as a way of putting together geographical
knowledge that is always unique and variable.